Sweet Vegan! Calling All Cooks

This had to happen. I just had to challenge all you cooks out there to flex your delicious imaginations and come up with sweet desserts and treats that are absolutely free of any and all animal products. In other words, vegan sweets.While it is not hard at all to cook and eat vegan most of the time, sweets can be a bit of a challenge to the most seasoned vegan cook. Western desserts, usually baked, rely heavily on eggs, butter, cream and other dairy products. Indian sweets are also usually dairy-based, which puts them on a vegan’s list of just-can’t-eat foods.

But at the same time, there are cooks out there who are every day challenging our long-held notions about cooking with animal products. Today, not only is it possible to make vegan versions of most popular sweets, it is also possible to make them just as delicious, if not more so.

For this event, just think different. How about almond or soy milk instead of cow’s milk? Ground flaxseed or cornflour or silken tofu instead of eggs? Soymilk curdled with vinegar instead of buttermilk? And if you just cannot do without the sour cream or the cream cheese or the whipped cream, remember, there are vegan options of all these foods available at health food stores and even, sometimes, in your regular supermarket. Most are surprisingly good.

Of course, if your recipe does not require an animal product in the first place, you don’t have to worry about the substitutes at all.

I’d love to see what you can come up with, and no, you don’t have to have a food blog to enter this event. The recipe does have to be newly posted, though, so please don’t send old blog posts unless you cook and post the recipe again for this event.

Send as many entries as you like and link back to this post. Feel free to use the logo. If you need help, there are already many bloggers out there who have posted countless recipes for sweet vegan treats. All you need to remember is the recipe has to be sweet and none of the ingredients should have an animal source. So no butter, milk, cream, ghee or other dairy products, no eggs, and no honey.

Your entries should reach me before 6 pm Oct. 31 at vaishalihonawar[at]gmail[dot]com, or just click on the Email tab in my profile. Include these details:

Hi Vaishali, what a great event, really out-of-the-box thinking! So wonderful that it is your first event too. I will surely have an entry:-)Have missed reading your blog, and will catch up with previous posts soon..

Priya, try vaishalihonawar@gmail.com. You can also click on the email link in my profile. I’ll check and make sure I’ve got the right one in the post.Thanks for pointing it out, and looking forward to your entry.